Wilbur and Orville Wright and the first powered flight, Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, December 17 1903. Photograph ACKNOWLEDGEMENT must be made to The Smithsonian Institution. (Photo by Ann Ronan Pictures/Print Collector/Getty Images)
1900
- Boxer Rebellion in China
- Italy’s King Umberto I Assassinated
- Kodak Introduces $1 Brownie Cameras
- Max Planck Formulates Quantum Theory
- Sigmund Freud Publishes The Interpretation of Dreams
1901
- Australia Becomes a Commonwealth
- First Nobel Prizes Awarded
- First Trans-Atlantic Radio Signal
- Queen Victoria Dies
- U.S. President McKinley Assassinated
1902
- Boer War Ends
- Mount Pelée Erupts
- The Teddy Bear Is Introduced
- U.S. Passes the Chinese Exclusion Act
1903
- WSPU Founded by English Suffragist Emmeline Pankhurst
- First License Plates Issued in the U.S.
- First Message to Travel Around the World
- First Silent Movie, The Great Train Robbery
- First World Series
- Plague in India
- The Wright Brothers Make the First Flight at Kitty Hawk
1904
- First Popular American Film
- Ground Broken on Panama Canal
- Mary McLeod Bethune Becomes a Trailblazing Educator After Opening Her School for Black Students
- New York City Subway Opens
- Russo-Japanese War Begins
- Trans-Siberian Railway Completed
1905
- “Bloody Sunday” and the Russian Revolution of 1905
- Einstein Proposes His Theory of Relativity
- First Gallery of the Simplon Tunnel Through the Alps Completed
- First U.S. Movie Theater Opens
- Freud Publishes His Theory of Sexuality
- Paintings by Matisse and Derain Introduce Fauvism
1906
- The Dreadnought Launched
- Finland First European Country to Give Women the Right to Vote
- Kellogg’s Starts Selling Corn Flakes
- President Roosevelt Simplifies Spelling
- San Francisco Earthquake
- Upton Sinclair Writes The Jungle
1907
- Ten Rules of War Established at the Second Hague Peace Conference
- First Electric Washing Machine
- Picasso Introduces Cubism
- Typhoid Mary Captured for the First Time
1908
- Earthquake in Italy Kills 150,000
- Ford Introduces the Model-T
- Jack Johnson Becomes First Black Boxer to Become World Heavyweight Champion
- SOS Accepted as Universal Distress Signal
- Three Year-Old Pu Yi Becomes Emperor of China
- The Tunguska Event: Huge and Mysterious Explosion in Siberia
- Turks Revolt in the Ottoman Empire
1909
Japan’s Prince Ito is Assassinated
Plastic Is Invented
Robert Peary Becomes the First to Reach the North Pole